What are 10 facts about Lionel Messi? 1 in 2000, the famous F. C. Barcelona’s scout Carles Rexach flew to Rosario, Argentina, to see young Lionel Messi, 12, play football. He was an experienced man, former player and coach, quite used to deal with young sports promises but he was so excited when he saw Messi pick the ball, carry it and score as if alone in the pitch (yes, the usual Messi stuff), that he wrote a contract on a paper napkin and hired him immediately. 2 some years after Lionel arrived at Barcelona, the Royal Spanish Football Federation became obsessed with a plan to invite him to join the Spanish Football Team. 3The third incredible fact in this list of Top 10 Facts about Lionel Messi has to do with his incredible skills – so amazing that he began to be compared with 80’s star Diego Armando Maradona. 4 In fact, he is not praying, but dedicating all of his goals to his grandmother, Celia Olivera Cuccittini, who passed away some years ago. Celia was who first recognized Lionel’s skills and who took him to a football pitch for the first time. Maybe all football lovers should do as Lionel and thank Celia for all those wonderful performances we have witnessed during the last decade. 5Hat tricks are extremely exceptional, of course, unless your name is Lionel Messi (or Cristiano Ronaldo!). The Argentinian player has scored three or more goals in 53 matches! Yeah, fifty-three hat tricks for the fifth position in our Top 10 Facts about Lionel Messi! 6 All Lionel Messi’s hat tricks where great, but there are two that F. C. Barcelona’s fans will never forget. Lionel scored his first hat trick in the Clasico against Real Madrid in 2007 (3-3), when he was just 19, and repeated this in 2014, this time in Madrid’s Stadium (3-4). That day Lionel Messi also broke the record of 18 goals in the Derby, held by another Argentinian Top player, the legendary Alfredo Di Stefano. 7 Lionel Messi has been compared with those console players which score hundreds of goals. Fortunately for us, Lionel Messi is not run by an algorithm; he is a human being with a great deal of talent (I mean it!) that helped him to score more than 700 hundred goals playing for F. C. Barcelona and Argentina’s National Team in eight different competitions since his debut at 17, in 2004. 8 Messi is such a brilliant individual that he has turned it into something different. He has won six Golden Balls (2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2015, 2019), six Golden Boots (2010, 2012, 2013, 2017, 2018, 2019) and The Best award in 2019, among others. 9 Messi holds the Guinness World Records title for his 91 goals scored in a calendar year, back in 2012. Although Lionel Messi is one of the most spectacular football players who has ever existed, and although he has won the Under 20 World Cup and an Olympic Gold Medal with Argentina, he is still struggling to win a major international trophy. He was close in 2014, 2015 and 2016, and will have another chance in 2022, as a veteran. Go for it, Lionel, you definitely deserve it!